Daily Archives: September 20, 2009

The hum and twitter around the blogosphere is that Andrew Breitbart has something serious cooking, and it’s coming out this week. After the pantsing his site, BigGovernment.com, gave the national media with the O’Keefe and Giles ACORN sting, Breitbart is apparently poised to embarrass them again with a scoop that promises to be juicy. Right now, the best speculation is that it will have to do with the NEA. Patterico peruses an article in which Breitbart seems to give strong hints:

When the next big scandal hits – and it will, and it most certainly won’t come from traditional journalism – all eyes will be on “Pinch” Sulzberger to see if he does his job.

With hindsight, it’s obvious that Breitbart was foreshadowing the release of the ACORN tapes. He even specifically mentioned ACORN in his column, as one of two stories that showed how the media was covering for Obama.

So, let’s see. He identified ACORN as one of the two big stories, and then he dropped a bomb on ACORN. Now he’s hinting that there’s another bomb coming.

See what I’m getting at here?

If you’re trying to figure out what the next big shoe to drop might be, I suggest that you consider re-reading his column to see what he identified as the second story that demonstrates the media’s complicity with the Democrat party. Namely, the NEA:

Another story not making the evening news is that of artist Patrick Courrielche, who has shown that the National Endowment of the Arts is seeking to use government funds to promote Obama administration initiatives. On Sunday’s “This Week,” George Will pierced the mainstream media veil.

“Recently there was a conference call arranged by the National Endowment for the Arts, with a representative of the White House, for potential grantees or actual grantees of the federal government, getting subsidies – the theme of it was how the arts community could advance the president’s agenda. Now I don’t know how many laws that breaks, but I am sure there are some.”

What are you waiting for, Katie Couric?

If I were a betting man, I’d be betting big that the upcoming bombshell will relate to the NEA. You read it here first.

You may recall the NEA story (which both Bruce and I covered) regarding how the agency actively encouraged artists to promote the Obama administration’s agenda through their works.

In addition to Patterico’s reading of the tea leaves, two names have been floating around in connection with a Breitbart blockbuster, both of which are also connected to the NEA: Yosi Sargent, its communications director and the leader of the conference call described above, and Buffy Wicks, a former Obama field organizer now with the White House Office of Public Engagement who was also on the call. If the speculation is right, I’d have to guess that Breitbart has uncovered something incriminating (assuming that the NEA conference call breached some law or regulation).

Whatever it is, I agree with those who are saying that Breitbart’s primary target in all of this is the MSM. I think it was the media who were the real losers in the ACORN story, just as they were in the Van Jones debacle. Ever since last summer the media has unashamedly supported Obama in every way that it can, and covered up for him where possible. Embarrassing connections are buried, misstatements and outright lies are routinely ignored, and opposition is either painted in a most unflattering light or marginalized as fringe elements of little import. And that’s not to mention the constant caterwauling about racism at every turn. Breitbart easily outmaneuvered them in the past few weeks since, like the hare found out, you can’t sleep on the job and expect to stay out in front. As Ace said, “He warned the media. They ignored the warning.” I look forward to whatever comeuppance Mr. Breitbart has in store for them this week.

So what did happen on that call? Was the NEA coordinating with the White House to push their agenda on a group of artists eager for and reliant upon the NEA for grants, or is the NEA telling the truth that this call “was not a means to promote any legislative agenda”?

Tomorrow at noon ET, explosive new information will answer that question and raise many others.

Subject(s):Michael and Bruce will be winging it again this week as our broadcast pro is out doing other things. We’ll continue the discussion about the charges of racism flying about (handy flowchart below to figure out if you are or aren’t a racist), we’ll talke about whether we think the Sunday morning program blitz will be effective for Obama, and we’ll bat the subject of the missile defense shield from Poland and the Czech republic around and discuss its ramifications. And if we have time, some ACORN.

As with last week, this week’s “Observations” will only be available on BlogTalk Radio.

This is not a new problem, of course. It came up during the campaign because of ACORN’s vote fraud scandals. The talking point then was “Obama has never worked for ACORN”, which was technically true, but conveniently obscured several associations, including Obama conducting training sessions on leadership for ACORN.

With the new focus on ACORN, I expect this area to get some more examination. With Obama’s new car smell having faded, it might even get more traction this time. Certainly with Obama’s self-declared work as a “community organizer”, many folks who are not paying much attention will just assume that he must have some connection to a group with “Community Organizers” right there in their title. That’s pretty simplistic, and maybe even unfair, but it’s the state of play.

So we’ll probably see a new round of defense of Obama from the left, attempting to distance him from ACORN. Obama is doing his part to help them; I think I detected the beginning of a new talking point in this interview with George Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?

OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.[Emphasis mine]

What a great bit of misdirection! He only has to assert it, with no evidence. Absent someone digging up obscure committee hearings or memos, it will be impossible to disprove.

Of course, one could point out that Obama was a senator when some of those budget bills were passed that sent money to ACORN, which in any rational governmental system means he would have known about the money. However, he’s got the usual excuse that they don’t read what they vote for anyway. That seems to be enough for the sclerotic legacy media, so he probably won’t get challenged on his assertion.

Therefore I’m predicting some leftist will soon use that assertion as a rebuttal to someone asserting a connection between Obama and ACORN. “He doesn’t have anything to do with ACORN. Why, he didn’t even know they got federal money!”

Or in the words of almost any economist who knows his business – “I told you so.”

Essentially what has happened is precisely what most of them said would happen – the program, Cash For Clunkers, did nothing more than steal from future sales.

To paraphrase the Reverend Wright – the clunkers are coming home to roost:

Edmunds.com reports that “September’s light-vehicle sales rate will fall to 8.8 million units . . . the lowest rate in nearly 28 years, tying the worst demand on record. After the cash-for-clunkers program boosted August sales to their first year-over-year increase since October 2007, demand has plunged. In at least the last 33 years, the U.S. seasonally adjusted annual rate has only dropped as low as 8.8 million units once — in December 1981 — with records stretching back to January 1976.”

But fear not – Washington has learned its lesson:

Now NHTSA says that, despite burdening manufacturers with $60 billion in new costs, its new 35.5 mpg fuel mandate will stimulate the economy by boosting auto sales by 65,480 vehicles through 2016 because Washington “expects stronger consumer demand for fuel-efficient models.”

“It’s interesting that what we are proposing is fundamentally so conservative compared with so many of our friends and allies around the world who do a much better job than we do in covering everybody and in keeping costs down and yet some of the political opposition is so overheated.”

So what can we learn from that? First, the talking about about the opposition being “overheated” has reached all corners of the left. It again proves that if this is “overheated” then history began January 20th, 2009.

More importantly though, it makes the point that whatever is passed by Democrats and called “health care reform” (and something will be passed), it will only be the beginning of deep government intrusion in that segment of the economy. If this is “conservative” you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.